MariAn Gail Brown: DEP’s stance on mountain lions disquieting

Updated 11:39 am, Wednesday, June 22, 2011

A mountain lion that had a fatal fandango with an SUV on the Wilbur Cross Parkway in Milford is getting the kind of necropsy no other big cat ever gets in Connecticut -- for one reason.

It's to prove the dead feline is the same creature spotted days earlier roaming uber-tony Greenwich.

Look at what this dead cat faces. First, it gets trucked to the Sessions Woods Wildlife Management Area in Burlington, where its stomach contents are being examined. And its bone structure, too. It's to see if any of its limbs have ever fractured. If there are signs it had broken bones, scientists will check to see if they healed on their own or whether someone, perhaps a veterinarian, set them.

Nevertheless, there are those among us, such as John Lutz of the Eastern Puma Research Network in West Virginia, who are convinced that Mountain Lion A of Greenwich and Dead Mountain Lion B in Milford are two different cats.

Lutz is emphatic about his conclusion.

"No, they are not the same. The dead one in Milford has a very light coat. And the one in Greenwich had a dark coat. It just doesn't fit the pattern," Lutz says. "What it is consistent with is two cats working simultaneously, maybe not exactly litter mates, but chances are they knew each other."

Keep in mind that until the DEP had an actual dead mountain lion in its possession it maintained there were no such cats -- cougars, pumas or ghosts of the forest -- living in the Land of Steady Habits. And that had to be a comforting thought.

Then there was confirmation that the scat (i.e., poop) found near the animal's tracks in Greenwich is that of a mountain lion.

"There are no native mountain lions in Connecticut. In March, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service declared them extirpated from the Northeast," Dwayne Gardner, a spokesman for the DEP, says. "And if there are any mountain lions in Connecticut, they are not from Connecticut. If there are any, they are mountain lions people kept in preserves that had escaped."

Yet the DEP, without any scientific backing from the mountain cat carcass, thinks we should believe these two sightings so close together are of one and the same animal. That's illogical. And dumb. The public is better served if our environmental protection folks warn us to pay attention to our surroundings, keep a close eye on wandering tots and tell us how to better fend off an attack if we find ourselves in the vicinity of these cats.

Lutz has a theory as to why the DEP is so adamant in its "lone-mountain lion" theory.

"They want to try and prohibit panic from the public. Imagine people's reaction? They would demand law enforcement and game officials take action. One group might say, go capture it. Others will clamor for them to kill it," Lutz says. "Until they find precise documented evidence of another mountain lion they'll just continue to deny their presence in Connecticut."

Word to the wise: Dog tracks are elongated and show the canine's toenails. A mountain lion's tracks are shorter, the pads are oval shaped and the toe prints will never feature toenail markings even when the animal runs on ice. If you see anything that suggests mountain lion tracks, place a ruler next to it. Snap a few pictures and send them to the DEP. They might want to have a look at them.